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Visual design part 2 LTEC 5220

This week's assignment was to make a visual learning document with images only. I do love to work with the Adobe Creative Suite, and I haven't used those skills in a few years. It was fun to use them again. This assignment was made much easier because I simplified the instructions. I used a bread machine instead of telling the learner how to kneed the bread, and how fast they should mix the dough.  Hopefully I get a passing grade on this unlike last week’s assignment.
 Creating a design exclusively with images, and no words or numbers, was difficult. Even the examples we were given, had some numbers in them. It was fun coming up with symbols to represent stuff.  Instead of writing “3 cups of flour”, I drew a flour bag and had an arrow pointing from it to three measuring cups.  That being said, I don’t know if people will get confused with what the symbols mean.

While visual only instructions will probably not be used very often in the “real world” it does have its purposes.  People with limited English (or other languages) skills could benefit from more pictures. Moreover, literacy around the world is not universal. Moreover, doing this exercise forced me to be creative. Pictures often are a better solution compared to symbols and words.

I went through several revisions before I as happy with the design.  While I wanted to do something that would fit on a letter sheet of paper (8.5 X 11) I soon realized that that looked way too busy.  Splitting the diagram into multiple pages was the right visual choice. Next time, it would probably be smarter to storyboard everything on paper before even starting with the computer. A lot of time was wasted a lot of time redesigning the diagram.

Illustrator proved to be a very effective tool for this assignment. It has far more tools for manipulating shapes, including the pathfinder tool. Because all the shapes in illustrator are vectors, it is very easy to scale items.  I also found using illustrator, that it is easier to design each symbol separately. Making each symbol at a very large size. For example, making a large measuring cup rather than making the size I wanted it in the end.  Because illustrator is vector, it is very easy to copy and paste each symbol into a master document.

That being said, people who are getting into graphic design for the first time might feel more comfortable with Photoshop. I still use photoshop for photos. I am also a fan of GIMP and Paint.net. These free software packages are pretty much the only thing the average person needs.

Well, I am looking forward to the next assignment.

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